a historical “graffiti,”, A Human Strategy, Matt Berry, aphorism 256
256
1) Arguments that are built upon names, dates and places are held by people wandering, as it were, through a labyrinth. There are conflicting signs, a historical “graffiti,” strewn upon the walls, and it is up to the arguers to refute some of the signs and support some of the others, and through this method find their way from room to room. Of course, it goes without saying that for every passageway “correctly understood” there is an authoritative stamp which one might add to one’s portfolio.
How do two such arguers proceed? At first we ourselves, as we listen and evaluate, are lost in the labyrinth of ideas, and so we cannot quite discern a method. However, if we were to conduct a small experiment and stop up our ears, while at the same time trusting only in our observations of human behavior, we would then discover their very simple method: the first task of two such arguers is to open their portfolios immediately and compare stamps.
2) If, on the other hand, the arguers had no portfolios ... that is, if they followed a very strict method, forbidding all “name-dropping,” appeals to external authorities, historical events ... in other words if the only “authorizations” permitted were those stamped by the actual experiences and confirmations of the arguers, then some confusion would first have to be overcome.
With the former method (1), the arguers believe that true progress is “proved” by an adequate number of authoritative stamps. These external authorizations — “proofs” — are held to be as relevant to the matter as personal confirmations are irrelevant. And passage from one set of “proofs” to another seems to be in accordance with the true order of nature. When they observe the latter (2), it would seem as if “progress” were impossible. “How can they possibly expect to find their way out of the labyrinth?”
The latter has no fixed walls. He knows full well that his honesty ... his constant attacks upon his own self-deceit do not move his reality, only his presumptions. But as experienced, it is all just the same: everything is always moving, giving way. He feels unfortunate and desperate ... as one would feel if thrown into deep water for the first time.
The former needs walls of names and dates and places upon a solid foundation if he is to have rooms through which he might receive the requisite stamps. For how else can he measure his “progress”? The latter also needs names and dates and places ... but so as to have actualities by which he might propel himself ... something from which he pushes away. In short, the former needs the walls in place, as proof of a progress no different from that of a traveler moving from point A to point B. The latter needs the external proof only in so far as it is that which he must necessarily leave behind ... that point from which he returns to himself ... to his own reality. He carries no “authorizations,” for they would drag and sink ... would drown him. His personal state, the evolution of that state, is of “no concern” to either the historian or the nine-to-five philosopher — and it must be so, for the very hint of such a progress would suggest a loss in rank for the stamp collector, and we rarely catch sight of the choice between bad judgment and bruised ego — since the choice itself bruises.
In short, true progress can only be self-confirmed. The latter approaches genuine experience by paring away the not-me, assuming his own possession. The former, browbeaten, acts under the presumption that genuine experience belongs to someone else ... and that it is the task of life to wander, beg and borrow for that which he does not have ... that which he can never have. He finds nothing whatsoever in his own possession but a single resistance ... an objection to the method of the latter: “He does not even have a labyrinth, and so how can he expect to find a way out?”